I’d like to purchase a digital camera sometime soon. The most important quality I want is for me to be able to make an 8x10 print that’s as sharp as one from ASA 100 film. Also any information on editing would be helpful. I think Nikon has their own proprietary software–is that common?
I would say that pretty much any decent digital camera out there will be able to make a sharp 8x10 print. At this point in technology, it’s not the megapixel count that’ll make the difference but the optics and the sensor. If you have, say, a sharp Nikon lens and a D70 (5-ish megapixels), you can blow that sucker up to well over 16x20 without degrading the image too much. I have an old D1 with 2.74 megapixels that prints 8x10s like a dream.
Most digital cameras do come with some sort of proprietary software, so you can download and edit your images without buying any additional software. However, your pictures can be downloaded and edited on your computer independent of the manufacturer’s software. I don’t use any of the proprietary software for any of my digital cameras—I just stick my CF cards into the leader, fire up Photoshop, and there I go.
For a casual user, I would recommend getting Photoshop Elements. I’m sure there’s other good imaging programs for the consumer-level user, but Photoshop is all I know.
Where the proprietary software may come in handy is if your camera has a special “RAW” mode it could shoot in. For example, Nikons shooting in RAW mode produce .NEF files rather than jpegs or tiffs. This file is a raw, unprocessed image and data capture. You need proprietary software to view this (or some software-—like Photoshop CS—supports this.) You have a lot more flexibility in post with a RAW file, although I would say that even a majority of professionals don’t use it. Photojournalists certainly don’t. (It slows down your camera’s frame rate quite a bit.)
Actually, I’m a bit surprised that the film vs. digital debate died down as quick as it did. A few years back, people were arguing that you’d need 20+ Megapixels to rival 35mm film, but generally most people now seem pretty content with 6-8. And the 8x10’s are very hard to distinguish from film.
As for editing, it depends on your aspirations, but for everything but professional use, Photoshop Elements or a similar package should be enough. If you take pictures in RAW mode, you may need special software to read it.
Anyway, we’ll tell you what we tell everyone else with this question – go over to dpreview.com or steves-digicams and you’ll find more that you ever wanted to know about digital cameras, including reviews and sample photos.
I made reasonable 8x10s from my first 2 MP camera, but 3-4 will produce a nicer version. Beyond that there’s not a significant improvement as you get bigger, except that you can crop more and still have the quality.
There are pixels and there are pixels. Those “few” pixels in pulykamell’s D1 are on a huge CCD compared to a consumer camera which means much lower noise and wider dynamic range. The same number of pixels on a tiny, 1/2.7 or 1/1.8 CCD won’t look nearly as good. Still even a consumer digicam with a 3mp sensor is going to print nice 8x10s. Based on my experience with a Dimage 7, a couple of small Canons and the D100 I would not even consider a 5mp or higher resolution camera unless it’s a DSLR with a large sensor.
FWIW I shoot NEF format with the D100 whenever possible. I use Nikon Capture but the newest version of Paintshop Pro supports Nikon raw files though I haven’t used it much yet for that feature. I highly recommend it as poor man’s Photoshop.
As the man in the hot rod shop says, “speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?”
Oh, one caveat. My Canon A75 makes nice images that can print at 8x10 provided I have it set to ISO 50. This is very critical. Set it to a higher number or automatic and the results are poor to terrible. It goes to ISO 400 but the results are virtually unusable. You’ll do fine with a consumer camera in daylight or with a flash but if you want to make available light images with the same or better quality you’ll need a bigger sensor, bigger glass which means more $$$. Remember that a consumer camera will likely have a lens aperture no bigger than f2.8 and that only at wide angle.
Check out the Panasonic DMC-FZ series.
if you have the cash, I would recommend the Nikon D70 or the Canon 20D. Stay away from point and shoots, since the noise is too much under normal shooting situations. The 20D is rumored to have no noticeable noise even at 1600 ISO. (I’ll tell you in a couple of weeks, when I get mine)
Certainly, a dSLR will take exceptionally nice images, but I can’t carry one with me most of the time. There are many compact cameras, even ultracompacts, that will take images that can be printed at 8x10 without problem.
Firther to this debate:
I was in a bookstore the other day and picked up one of the many photography magazines (can’t remember which one Popular Photography, maybe?), where they had an article on the latest and greatest Canon digital SLR, the EOS-1Ds MarkII, which has 16.6 megapixels.
The reviewer took a picture of a scene with this camera, and with a Canon EOS-1 film camera using ISO-100 slide film. He then enlarged a very small section of each picture, and noted that, for the first time ever in his testing, the digital camera beat the film for image quality.
Exactly.
The debate over digital images is becoming something like the older debates over lens quality—it’s moving beyond the realm of people’s actual ability to distinguish the difference. Sure, some lenses are sharper than others, and some digital cameras are better than others. But the fact remains that, in most situations, people either can’t or don’t notice the difference.
It’s all very well to compare the resolving power of two lenses, for example, but it becomes something of an academic exercise when you begin talking about differences of 1 or 2 lpmm (lines per millimeter) at a resolution that the human eye can’t even discern anyway.
Similarly with digital cameras. Sure the point-and-shoot and the “prosumer” model digital cameras aren’t as good at noise reduction as the SLRs. That’s why they’re so much cheaper. But for most situations, including the printing of 8X10 pictures, it’s often extremely hard to see the difference in everyday circumstances and at normal viewing distances.
I’m a total newbie to this, and my previous camera took <ahem> 126 cartridge film, but I have to say I’m almost ecstatically pleased with my best Christmas present, the Canon “PowerShot” S70. It works nicely in point-n-shoot mode but I’m also learning all about aperature and f-stops and whatnot.
I took this one walking back to the subway after feasting on Ethiopian food, coming here towards the intersection of 9th Ave and 44th St; it had been raining and was quite foggy.
Small word of advice, resize your photos before uploading them to the web. Keep it someething that is smaller than typical screen resolution. Some browsers can be set to auto resize but you still have to download a large image.
Nice photo BTW, a good example of how digital makes it easier to experiment in odd lighting conditions.
Well, yes, but you can also use noise reduction software that can turn a borderline high ASA shot into something quite usable. Something like Noise Ninja or Neat Image looks at the typical noise profile in your camera sensor and uses that as a base for filtering out the artifacts in the picture that are due strictly to thermal and other noise.
Noise reduction programs have a purpose but they have the flaw of removing detail along with noise. As you pointed out there is more than one kind of noise and some cameras even have dark image subtraction to compensate for variation in pixels from the sensor itself.
The other problem is that smaller sensors have smaller lenses with smaller true apertures which means less light to make an image which means fewer photons fall on each photosite. This means that photon distribution is less and less uniform. Shooting at high ISO just compounds the problem since it uses fewer photons to make an image in order to have a usable shutter speed. With small sensor cameras the noise at ISO 400 isn’t borderline, it’s awful.
I’m out of town this week but I’ll perform a high ISO test with my A75 and D100 to show you what I mean. I might be able to jigger things around so I can get full size crop of an image of the same scene with each camera so the scale is the same so you can see how the noise differs.
Not really necessary as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got a “small sensor” camera (a Sony F717) and while it’s not great at high ISO, I have been able to get some decent 8x10’s after massaging with noise reduction software. Is it as good as a Nikon or Canon D-SLR? Almost certainly not. But at the cost/quality/convenience intersection that I’m looking for, it’s acceptable.